What about Kitsch ?

If we try to define Kitsch in a few words I would say that we are talking about the industrialization of design and mass production, where excessive emotions and melodrama are the focus. Humor also has a role in this excessiveness as it pleases a certain amount of people. And it can also be considered as a contrast of beauty, but how can we consider the ugly? And then we start thinking about what could be considered of good or bad taste.

It is definitely an over ornamentation. If you go back to the idea, that ornament is crime, it is something that modernism made us think, no? You have this idea that architecture or design should be about functionality, pragmatism, hygiene, pure form, geometry and so on is on. And if you see that this kind of ornamentation is done just for the pleasure of it(and I think pleasure is a very funny word when you talk about kitsch, and it's something that has todo a lot with kitsch) and if we think about modernism as something that dictated the design, I think you have to be straight, regular, normed. So, we tend to follow the norm and have to follow standards for production and so on. It has to be hygienic, it has to be simple, it to respect a certain geometry and it has to be pure. Then kitsch doesn't make any sense. And you could categorize it as ugly because then you could say: “okay, what is beautiful is what is simple and functional and pragmatic, and what is ugly is what is not”.
And so basically the idea is that it is a contrast that we create ourselves. It's not natural.And I think that maybe this idea of kitsch and ugly is connected because of that idea, that ornamentation is a huge issue, it is a huge problem. But ornamentation is not a problem, it is just that we defined it like that because we think that modernity and modernism are good. But is ornamentation the problem? Or, as Adolf Loos says “decoration, is a crime”? I don't think so.

I come from Portugal, a country that colonized a lot of places, unfortunately. And with the money that they made with this slave trades and other, they made beautiful golden churches all over. And these are all baroque churches. And you get in there and it is like an explosion, right? But it is a lot of decoration. None of that needs to be there, right? It's all superfluous. It's all for style. It's all for showing how much money you have. Right? What is the purpose of all that ornamentation?

So we can say that it is all for pleasure?

I think the idea of pleasure and of use are ideas that are very important when we are thinking about kitsch, because kitsch is something that usually has to do with aesthetics. It has to do with superfluous things, superficial things, and it has to do with some kind of humor as you said, it's almost a joke because we don't need it, but we do it anyway. It's almost ugly. It's not actually important for us. So, I think it is the idea of pleasure and we do because we like it somehow. Now it's a bit subversive, we don't need it, but we like it. It's beautiful.
I had a flat mate once who was from Russia, and she collected embroideries of cats. Would you say that it is kitsch? Did she need it? Maybe she didn't but she loved it. It was all over her wall. I mean, it is very personal, that definition of kitsch. I think that maybe what I think as kitsch you don’t see it the same. In that sense it is a very slippery term.

Yes, what for us is kitsch is not for someone else. Our grandmother’s decoration may now be very kitsch for us. Maybe there is a sentimental attachment, and it has a kind of humor around it but there's no use for it, no goal.

But that shouldn’t stop you from having it, right? It is this idea that modernism has no feelings like machines have no feelings. Robots have no feelings, industry has no feelings. This is something that we've learned with the Industrial Revolution. Progress will come! Revolution will come! And it doesn't need ornament. It only needs pragmatism and functionality: things have to work. But kitsch is something that doesn't have anything to do with progress, usability, or pragmatism. It is all about things that are not useful, that are superficial.It points to an alternative to modernism. That is why I think it is an interesting word, because maybe we don't need to make everything pragmatic and functional. Maybe there can be room for humor. Maybe there can be room for uselessness. Maybe there can be room for beauty and for pleasure, just for the sake of it.

So then, is it just a contradiction to this pragmatic idea about use and form?

Yes, totally. But I don't think that design should be so pragmatic about use and form. I think, yes, it depends on what you want to do. If you want to design a glass that can contain a hot liquid, you know that you have some basic things that you need to do and you need to, you know, save upon material.But can there be something more than that? I am not sure that things are just black or white. They can have hidden dimensions. That is again a thing that modernism has invented. And I think the moment right now is a moment of destroying modernism and questioning it. Is it that good? Did it do that good to us and to the planet? Because arguably you could say that modernism has brought us to the point where we are now, so maybe it's not so bad to have alternatives. I think that kitsch can be a contradiction to that idea. It is it is something else completely. But maybe it's an interesting alternative. It talks about laziness and pleasure and not usefulness. And maybe those are things we should be exploring because they are alternatives to a modernist understanding of life.

Can we then consider kitsch, not only as a visual aspect, but maybe as an idea or way of thinking?

It could apply to everything, and that would be interesting. What is a kitsch text like? I don't know, but that would be interesting to find out.

Is kitsch maybe just a reaction to too much perfection? To something that's very clean and sometimes too clean. Do you think that we need to break it up?

Totally, but this is also connected to that idea of trying to break up modernity, trying to present an alternative to a modernist understanding of design. And yes, totally, I think it is a reaction. But more than a reaction, I think it points to an alternative. It is a way out and it is a possibility beyond what we have there. And it's a good possibility. I think complexity is a good thing. Sometimes we don't understand all aspects of it, but it is good. And nowadays we live in a world where there are a lot of layers to everything. Complexity is something that is very ingrained in everything, and perhapsI wouldn't say kitsch is complex. Maybe that's not the right thing to say, but certainly kitsch is an alternative and that is a good thing. It is always good to have alternatives.Kitsch is a very subjective thing, and it is very interesting because this is also an alternative.

I would prefer to see it as antagonist, as a reaction to the mainstream esthetics, which is the aesthetic of modernity. But I don't know that what we like now is going to be kitsch when we are old. It doesn't have to do with generations but more with the fact that there is a dominant aesthetic and a mainstream aesthetic. And this is a reaction to that mainstream esthetic. And that is how you can define it, because it's not mainstream. It is an alternative, a reaction, an abundance. It is too much ornamentation, too much gold, too much color. It is too saturated, has too many fluffy parts.It is not functional. It is not pragmatic, and that is a good thing.

In that way we can say that if there is not time, there is no specific place either…

This whole form follows functionality, and it is so spread out. It is the dominant esthetics indesign and architecture everywhere now. And therefore, kitsch would maybe be a planetary thing in the sense that it's a reaction. But I don't think you can uniform it. I think there are many kinds of kitsch.

It is very difficult to recognize and place it, every time one sees it, there is a different definition with a different orientation. Because so many affirmed that it starts in the story of design, for example, with the industrialization, the duck building arrived straight away, and all these kinds of images appeared in the urban landscapes.

You see that's ornamentation, for the sake of ornamentation. And it's interesting, I think it is good that we have that, and we just don't have one way of thinking about the aesthetics. I'm all for alternatives, even if they look like a duck!